


See the Pyramids Along the Nile

by HarveyWallbanger



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Flogging, M/M, The usual meditation on death, This time with finger-fucking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-06
Updated: 2017-10-06
Packaged: 2019-01-09 22:01:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12285246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HarveyWallbanger/pseuds/HarveyWallbanger
Summary: It's always painful to let go.





	See the Pyramids Along the Nile

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this story comes from the song, You Belong to Me, by Pee Wee King, Chilton Price, and Redd Stewart.  
> I am not involved in the production of Gotham, and this school is not involved in the production of Gotham. No one pays me to do this. Do not try any of this at home. Thank you, and good night.

Once, Liza told him a story. Wide-eyed, and with great emotion in her voice. It was a harrowing tale of murder, injustice averted, intrigue, romance, show business. Spellbound, she held him over the days that it took her to fully unroll her tale, a little bit at a time. All she had to do was to start speaking in that tone of voice particular to storytelling, and she took him back. With his entire self, he remembered sitting at his mother’s knee, or being tucked into bed, listening to her tell him stories like this, that led you down such long and winding paths, so that you thought you might never reach your destination. Sometimes, even for the pricking of suspense, you hoped you never would. Finally, and with great satisfaction, Liza revealed that the accused murderess, found innocent by the court, had been guilty all along. Her claim of self-defense had been a lie. There had been no threat to her life, that of her husband, their unborn child. There had, in fact, been no unborn child. It was only a stroke of luck, a long line at city hall that had kept her from divorcing her husband weeks before, like she’d wanted to. She’d never loved him, and she was hungry for a new life. She’d shot the victim- her lover, as it happened, because he was ready to leave her for another woman. Exonerated, the murderess sold her story, her fabricated story, to the press, and went on to fame on the stage.  
A bit ghoulish? Perhaps. Carmine had asked Liza how she’d come to learn of such things, and with great earnestness, she told him that she was from a coarse, hard place where young women often came to bad ends, one way or another. And he’d smiled, and patted her hand, and told her that she was safe, now, with him. Were her eyes shining as she’d smiled back at him?  
It was more than a year after the fact that he realized that what she’d told him was roughly the plot of Chicago.  
When you’ve lived long enough, a funny thing happens to you. You come into the world completely innocent, ready to believe anything, because there’s so much you don’t know. Live long enough, and you return to that state of innocence: you’ve seen too much to not believe. Any strange thing you see or hear- the stranger it is, in fact, the truer it seems. Carmine knows far, far too much not to believe what he’s seeing. That some men do go willingly to their doom. That someone like James Gordon could be so easily tricked into lying down in his own grave. There was a time when Carmine would have preferred it not to be true, but the time for his own wants and needs is swiftly passing. The closer you get to death, the less you begin to matter, even to yourself. You’re already slipping out of the world. To cling lacks dignity. Maybe that’s what makes this all easier: Jim’s like Carmine; he’s not going to fight his fate. He’s not going to give it that.  
But death’s not coming for Jim. Not yet. Not until Carmine says so. In this way, his reach will extend beyond the grave. Sofia will come to understand why she’s not to kill Jim. At least not for a very long time. Right now, she doesn’t understand, nor can she. She’s young. Young people are always eager to begin and end things. They don’t see the pleasure in just being. They don’t always understand that life can be a far worse punishment than death.  
“Well, what am I going to do with you?” Carmine says. His voice is that of death, of time. He’s already slipping out of the world. “Sofia thinks you should die.”  
“She probably does,” Jim says, resolutely not looking at her, trying for the same coldness as Carmine, but it’s not something you can fake. You have to earn it. You have to pay for it with your life. “It’s useless to try to reason with either of you,” he says, all spit and spite. Defiantly, he sticks out his chin. “I did what I had to do,” he says, not, Carmine’s sure, for the first time.  
“Of course you did.”  
“What about you?” he sneers, “Do you think I deserve to die?”  
“No one deserves to die, James. You can’t deserve something that everyone gets. Go ahead, my dear.”  
Sofia smiles, the same sweet, dimpled smile she showed Carmine when he first brought her there, to this palace, this gilded cage, and told her that it belonged to her, that she was a princess. It was her smile that he’d always remembered, when he’d heard whispers, through the years, about cruelty to the servants that couldn’t be dismissed as a young girl’s whims and fits of pique. He thought of it when he wearily allowed that she should be given something to do, that she was young and energetic, and it was unnatural to keep her locked in the house. Mario was long gone, and there was no one left to tell her no; she would have found a way out if one hadn’t been provided. So, it was easy to let her go. Let her use her talents, for good or ill, and let fortune handle her as it would. When the reports reached Carmine in Gotham of her success, of the fear that surrounded her like fine perfume, of the money she was making for the family, he wasn’t pleased and he wasn’t disappointed; he simply was. When he learned of her triumph in Gotham, he congratulated her. She was bringing James Gordon back home, like a trophy, for Carmine to deal with as he would. She’d done very well, Carmine told her. He could hear the smile in her voice as she thanked him.  
Tossing her hair, she nods to the two men by the door. They step forward. “Hold his arms,” she says sunnily. Carmine sees the light flashing off of the knife before he knows what it is. For a moment, it looks at though Sofia’s plucked a thunderbolt from the sky. Of course, everyone knows the story of Zeus and Athene. How he turned her mother into a fly and swallowed her when she was pregnant, to try to the avert the prophecy that the child she bore would surpass the king of the gods. And then, from within the prison of Zeus’ skull, Athene was born. Sofia slits Jim’s shirt, exposing his back. She picks up her riding crop. Runs the end of it down Jim’s spine. It’s testament to either Jim’s spirit or his foolishness that he struggles. Carmine’s always been glad to see either in a man. Sometimes, you can’t tell the difference. Both can do great things. Through the first lashes, Jim continues to struggle. A man needs to hold onto his pride. Carmine watches as the full reality of the situation finally wraps itself around Jim. He watches Jim begin to simply wait for it to end. He watches the welts on Jim’s back swell, and then open, like the fruit that falls from the trees around the estate. It’s inedible to humans, and probably to most animals, but it still ripens and falls, bleeding scarlet seeds in golden juice onto the ground. The blood wells, slips down Jim’s back in thin trickles, as Sofia begins crossing her strokes back and forth, her expression no more troubled than if she were playing tennis. Carmine waits until she pauses to roll her wrist back and forth.  
“That’s enough,” he says, and she looks at him, alert, expectant. He can’t bring himself to tell her what he knows she doesn’t want to hear. Not yet. There’ll be plenty of time for that. “You can leave me and James alone.” Carmine gave her her way, or at least enough of it, so she’s happy to exit, followed by the men.  
It’s easy to pick Jim up, even for a weak, a dying man, because Jim wants to rise. He won’t let himself lean too much on Carmine, but the desire is there. To fall into Carmine and let himself be held. The more that it’s there, present in his mind and body, the more Jim has to pretend to want to fight it. Gently, Carmine drops him into a chair.  
“I guess you’re going to kill me, now,” Jim says, sounding drunk, sounding angry, sounding scared.  
“I’ve seen enough death. Death is waste. People try to be philosophical about it, say that you have to get rid of the old to make way for the new, but I don’t agree. I don’t believe in change for its own sake. If something works, you keep it. You keep it for as long as it’s useful to you. Do you understand?”  
“No,” Jim says, annoyed, confused; more frightened by his own confusion than by the prospect of bodily harm. How did he come from Peter?  
“It means that I find you useful, James. You’re bullheaded and arrogant, which means that you do things for your own reasons. You’re not happily renting out your soul, like most of your colleagues. With you, it’s a matter of ownership. I own you. When I die, Sofia will inherit you.”  
“Or what?”  
“Or the city you claim to care so much about goes down in flames. Cobblepot goes back to buying and selling its citizens, aided and abetted by whatever puppets he installs in positions of power, and we do business with him, because we have no reason not to. Gotham becomes a lawless place in all but name. Is that what you want, James?”  
“No,” he rasps.  
“We, however, understand each other. We respect the same things. A Gordon and a Falcone worked side by side before your time. They’ll carry on doing so after I’m gone. Your destiny is your own. Commissioner, mayor- it doesn’t matter to me. That’s for you and Sofia to discuss. As it should be. I’m already part of the past.”  
When Jim says nothing, Carmine helps him stand again. “Let’s clean you up.” He makes Jim a drink, lets the alcohol settle into him before taking off the remains of his shirt.  
“Come here,” he says when Jim’s finished his drink. He rips Jim’s shirt into rags, and cleans Jim’s wounds with whiskey. There’s a cloying poetry to it. Jim tries to remain silent, but he can’t. He hisses out breaths through his teeth, makes small wounded sounds when he breathes in.  
“The scars should fade,” Carmine says, “Sofia aims for immediate gratification; not lasting damage. It’s not serious.” It feels good to talk to Jim this way. Like a father would. It’s good for Jim, too. It’s good for him to hear a kind voice. From all accounts, there haven’t been many of those. “You drive them away,” Carmine says.  
“What?”  
“You drive them away, Jim. The people who might want to take care of you. You need to stop doing that, or you’re going to end up alone.”  
“Thanks for the advice,” Jim says bitterly.  
He pours Jim another drink, watches it chase the pain through him. His eyelids slip down. He looks as though he might sleep. It occurs to Carmine to offer him a bed for the night, but then, he’d have to give Sofia the facts of life sooner than he wishes to. She’s still wound-up. It’s better to wait.  
Carmine’s been thinking a lot about Liza. That’s inevitable. Not so much about her, though, as about how much humiliation there is in love. Life, you could say is humiliation, of which love is a species. The things that make up love are its instruments. It’s the care and the tenderness. They make you less yourself. That’s supposed to be the point. As long as you have love, it doesn’t matter, because you aren’t alone. When love goes away, though, there’s nobody left. Liza made him love her. It’s what she was there to do. Fish must have known- She had to have known how willingly Carmine would lose himself. All Liza had to do to make it happen was to give up herself, become someone else. And then, she took Carmine with her. He might have squeezed the breath out of her with brute force, but just as surely, she, with her gentleness and her kindness, snuffed out Carmine’s life.  
Jim’s not completely drunk when Carmine kisses him. Whether it’s because he’s just drunk enough or because he’s tired or because he still fears death, that he doesn’t try to get away, Carmine doesn’t know. He doesn’t particularly care. He could force Jim. He could make Jim do anything he wanted to. And there would still be no shame for Jim in it. You can’t argue with death. Death takes what it wants. And Carmine is death.  
But there’s such great shame in going willingly. There’s such horrible, such glorious shame in liking it.  
“What are you doing?” Jim whispers. It’s not horror, it’s not revulsion. Again, it’s confusion. What a place of marvels the world must be to Jim.  
“The whim of a dying man.”  
Something steals across Jim’s face. Has he aroused Jim’s sympathy? He smiles, and kisses Jim again. This time, Jim falls against him, permits himself to be held up. Carmine sets his hands on Jim’s waist, carefully away from the wounds. When he brushes a finger against the border of the bloodied space, Jim starts against him. It’s not in protest. You learn the difference. Between discomfort and what masquerades as it. He kisses Jim, touches Jim gently, lets him sink into it before shocking him out of it again. And then, Jim is shaking his arms, his head falling back drunkenly, his throat helplessly pumping out ragged breaths. The whole time, he’s holding onto Carmine. Not just to keep himself standing. Not just for that.  
He doesn’t get the slightest protestation when he turns Jim around, bends Jim over his desk. Jim sounds like he’s weeping, but it’s dry, and it’s his whole body that moves when Carmine puts his hands on him; moves with Carmine.  
“Spread your legs,” Carmine tells him, and undoes Jim’s pants. “Tell me to stop,” Carmine says.  
“What?” Jim gasps.  
“Tell me to stop,” he repeats slowly.  
“What?” is all he gets.  
“Tell me to stop. If you don’t want me to do this, tell me to stop.”  
“You’ll kill me,” Jim says flatly.  
“I thought I’d already made it clear that you were more useful to me alive than dead.”  
“It’s a trick.”  
“It isn’t. I swear, Jim. On my daughter’s life.”  
And then-- “Oh, Christ,” Jim says, lets his head fall forward.  
“That’s not a ‘no’.”  
“Just do it,” he says, his teeth grit, “Just do whatever you’re going to do to me.”  
“Not until you tell me that you want me to.”  
Jim laughs, like the sound of a man being struck. “Yes,” Jim says, ragged, wretched, “Yes, I want you to.”  
“Open your mouth.”  
Wordlessly, Jim does as he’s told. Carmine slips his finger inside, withdraws it. Satisfyingly, Jim gasps when Carmine pulls down his pants. He’s hurting Jim, he knows, but Jim doesn’t tell him to stop. It’s such a cliché, but he feels for the first time that he truly knows Jim. He pushes his finger deeper into Jim’s body, feels him try to fight and let go at the same time. Feels him give in fully. He bends completely, lets himself rest against the desk as Carmine fucks him. Finally, Carmine wraps his other hand around Jim’s cock. And that’s it. Jim comes in his hand. The welts on his back glisten like the eyes of newly-caught fish, with the sticky lustre of life that doesn’t yet know that it’s dead. Carmine lets Jim go, wipes his hands clean on a rag torn from Jim’s shirt. He looks at Jim. What’s Carmine looking at? What is it he sees?  
He opens the French doors, and lets in the sea air. For a while, he stands there, listening to the ocean crying like a beast that only knows hunger. He hears Jim behind him, collecting himself. When he’s ready, Jim comes to him. He takes Jim in his arms, and holds him, no longer caring where he touches Jim, feeling his exhausted breathing, his heart trying to find its rhythm. He presses his lips to Jim’s forehead, then his mouth. He holds Jim. For a long time, he holds Jim.  
He pushes Jim out of the library, onto the staircase leading to the beach. Out. Into the night. Into the yawning black sky and the endless white sand, and the roaring, the ravenous sea, beyond.


End file.
